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Monday, September 22, 2014

RE: HeForShe

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

So the internet has been pretty hyped up about Emma Watson's latest speech in the UN, calling for gender equality in our society today. The speech was a good one, calling for the males to be a part of the feminist movement, because by helping the ladies we are helping ourselves as well. Thus the campaign name, HeForShe. The struggles highlighted in the speech are indeed true and apparent in our society today, which is sadly gender divisive and exclusive. Benefits and rights are still unequally distributed between the two sexes. Emma Watson hit a note among people around the world, evident from the tons of article that popped like mushrooms after it.

But this gender equality thing. It sounds too complicated for me, to be honest. Equality is a pretty strong word, after all. To be truly equal, one needs to do away with the two dimensional view that we adopt to view gender. True equality means that when we're born, there will be no gender assignment. Not a boy, not a girl.

Because I believe that by labeling everyone into two categories, you are essentially giving someone a group identity. An artificial boundary is created. And psychology has shown time and time again that we humans are innately inclined to favor the group we belong to rather than the outgroup. It's our survival instinct, woven into our DNA. The minimal group paradigm methodology is an alive and well mechanism.

As long that the label male and female exist, differences in feelings and emotions do too.

But of course, that doesn't mean that we should forgo the entire fight together. I think feminism is a complicated fight. I mean how to you fight for your rights without alienating the opponent's? I mean there are those who believe that women should be given more rights, but at the same time their existing rights should not be compromised.

Like I said, complicated fight. But that doesn't mean I am against feminism though. From a very selfish perspective, I'm tired of hearing all this talk about how guys should always make the first move, how guys should pay for the dinner or how guys should sacrifice for the girls, because they're the "weaker" gender. I certainly wouldn't mind things going the opposite way for a change.